It Wasn't Supposed to Happen
by amberpire
Summary: As long as Aang always regarded him as something - anything - then Zuko could die a happy man. ;Zuko/Aang;


** It Wasn't Supposed to Happen**

_An Avatar fanfiction._

Zuko stared down at the sleeping boy before him - and he still thought of Aang that way. As a boy, as a child, even though he was over a hundred years old and now appeared almost an adult. Aang still carried that naive air, that irresistible childish charm. The fire bender had detested it at first, but now he found it strangely alluring.

It wasn't supposed to happen.

Zuko still hesitated as he always did just before their lips met. He never fully closed the distance. Aang had to step up, to purse those lips and press them against the taller male's. It felt wrong. Zuko nearly pulled away every time, because he shouldn't be here, he shouldn't be doing this. His mission was to kill the last airbender, not fall in love with him. But Aang's arms always snaked about his neck and forced him to remain in that embrace, ensuring no escape, and Zuko has no choice but to hold the smaller boy close to him and kiss him back. And in that, it felt right.

It wasn't supposed to happen. Zuko wasn't even sure how it _did _happen. Somehow, the line between enemies had blurred into friendship and from friendship into ... this. Whatever it was. The fire bender wasn't exactly sure. Somehow, Aang had become more imporant than his entire clan. Somehow, Aang meant more to him than the opinion of his father.

Zuko frowned, tilting his head up to stare into the sky above him, somehow impossibly deep, like an ocean overturned. It wasn't supposed to happen. It shouldn't have happened. There were times when Zuko wished for nothing more than to burn it all, to stomp away from Aang and leave him behind and go back to his clan and beg for them to take him back. And yet ... there were times when he could not picture living without Aang by his side.

He dug the heel of his boot angrily into the dirt. Stupid feelings, getting in the way of everything. He turned his gaze back to the airbender, watching the nearby fire cast shadows onto his pale, porcelain face. He still sported that bald head with the blue arrow, a marking he had traced many, many times when in this kind of thinking, and his hand raised over the sleeping boy to do just that. Starting at the tip of the arrow, he followed the left side, cutting inward sharply and then over Aang's skull. The last airbender stirred, causing Zuko to abruptly pull his hand back, but the smaller male didn't wake.

Zuko huffed. It wasn't supposed to happen. He had been obsessed with killing Aang for years. He had wanted nothing more than to bring his head on a stake to his father, throw it down, and show him in that gesture that he was worth something. He thought that his only way of proving that was by killing the last airbender.

It made Zuko sick. He lowered himself next to the other boy, propping his head up on his open palm, elbow braced on the grass below. He watched Aang's chest rise and fall. Zuko reflexively draped an arm over it. Aang, even in sleep, responded automatically to that familiar gesture and rolled toward the fire bender, mumbling incoherently as he pressed his face into Zuko's neck.

Zuko touched his lips to Aang's forehead. The other boy was shivering and Zuko closed his eyes, calling upon the element he had been blessed to bend. His body temperature soared, though it was a level that he was more than used to possessing, and kept it rising until Aang's shivering ceased.

It wasn't supposed to happen. His father probably didn't even regard Zuko as a son anymore, he was sure, and with a blink of surprise, Zuko realized he didn't care. As long as Aang always regarded him as something - _anything _- then Zuko could die a happy man. How had that happened? It almost made Zuko chuckle, and he would have if Aang wouldn't have been sleeping. He would have roared at the irony of falling in love with the boy he had sworn to kill. Now, he would not hesitate to trade his life for Aang's.

Under the moonlight, in the seclusion of the dark and the forest around them, Zuko confessed to Aang's skin how much he loved him, decorated the airbeder's with words he only dared to whisper in the shadows of the night. The other male was probably awake. His assumptions were proven true when the bald airbender arched his neck up and searched blindly for a kiss. And this time, this time, Zuko was the one to close the pointless distance between them. His body temperature soared again. The nearby fire raised and flickered, as if cheering.

It wasn't supposed to happen.

But Zuko was so glad that it had.


End file.
